‘American Sniper’ Leads Box Office With $90 Million

Even if American Sniper missed out on Golden Globe nominations, it still emerged as one of the big winners of the holiday season. IN ORDER to put on 40-plus pounds for his role in American Sniper, Bradley Cooper was forced to consume four times the recommended calories of an average person per day. “Bradley used his own trainer, who was busting on him.LOS ANGELES — Hollywood is prone to superlatives, but this one is truly jaw dropping: “American Sniper,” which arrived in wide release on Friday, is expected to sell about $105.2 million in tickets in North America over the four-day holiday weekend.

Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” ignited the holiday weekend box office, leaving January records behind as it made a stunning $90.2 million in three days. Clint Eastwood’s drama about Navy SEAL Chris Kyle has made quite a bit since it opened in only four theatres on Christmas, and the Warner Bros film expanded its release last week in the US. I think he was working out four hours a day for several months,” adds Hall of Cooper’s fitness regimen. “He was determined to do it naturally, he didn’t want to use any hormones or steroids or anything. While America’s coastal intelligentsia busied itself with chatter over little-seen art dramas like “Boyhood” and “Birdman,” everyday Americans showed up en masse for a patriotic, pro-family picture that played more like a summer superhero blockbuster than an R-rated war drama with six Oscar nominations. Blowing past all reasonable predictions, Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, which stars Bradley Cooper as the most prolific sniper in US military history, crushed the January record books with a scorching $90.2 million Friday-to-Sunday and an estimated $105 million Friday-to-Monday debut frame.

It’s a transformation that had Kyle’s widow, Taya, in tears the first time she saw the film, and she’s been talking about how Cooper captured her husband’s essence. He was just very systematic about it and took his trainer with him wherever he went.” On top of the massive intake of food and gruelling workouts, Cooper also worked with a vocal coach twice a day and spent hours watching footage of Kyle to make sure he nailed his performance of him. “He managed to find this essence of Chris Kyle,” Hall explains. “This almost spiritual mentality of the man and what drove him. Directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Bradley Cooper, “American Sniper” joins another unexpected hit, Angelina Jolie’s “Unbroken,” in turning out a conservative, heartland crowd that surprised Hollywood in its size. “Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico — all absolutely massive,” said Dan Fellman, president of domestic distribution at Warner Bros., which released “American Sniper.” But unlike “Unbroken,” Mr. It’s blockbuster numbers in January, the sort of numbers usually reserved for summer films and superhero movies,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior analyst for Rentrak. “No one saw this coming.

To wit, that bests the previous January record (Ride Along with $41m/$48m on the same weekend last year) while becoming the second-biggest R-rated debut of all-time behind only The Matrix Reloaded ($91m). The film has been building an audience and blasting any projections all weekend.” The $105 million tally is more than double what analysts were expecting,Dergarabedian says. It marks director Eastwood’s biggest debut, surpassing “Gran Torino,” which earned $29.5 million in 2008. “American Sniper” topped that with Friday’s $30.5 million opening.

Cooper, who turned 40 recently, had a strong 2014: He picked up a second consecutive Oscar nomination for American Hustle, performed the voice of Rocket Raccoon in The Guardians Of The Galaxy and is now on Broadway in The Elephant Man. The estimated IMAX total on 332 screens for the four-day weekend is $11.5 million (yet another record). “American Sniper,” with Bradley Cooper starring as Navy SEAL sharpshooter Chris Kyle, initially opened in December to packed theaters in limited release — making nearly $3.4 million on a handful of screens in Los Angeles, New York and Dallas. Kyle was killed in 2013 at a Texas gun range by an emotionally troubled veteran he was trying to help. “The previews looked really intense, and I was curious about it being a true story,” said Eric Davidson, 19, who saw the movie with two friends in Indianapolis on Friday. “I immediately recommended it on Twitter. The Bradley Cooper vehicle went wide this weekend after scorching four-theater per-screen-averages of over $100k p.s.a. for three weekends of limited release starting on Christmas Day where it earned $3 million going into the weekend. Everyone’s talking about it.” The film gave Hollywood its biggest January weekend opening ever, beating “Avatar,” which took in $74.4 million in 2010, after adjusting for inflation.

Josh Gad and Kevin Hart’s The “Wedding Ringer” took second place with $21 million for the three-day weekend (an estimated $25 million for four days). The dynamite first teaser ranks among the best such spots from last year, and Warner Bros. knew it didn’t have to do much more that drop that harrowing tease. The Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. release even made it seem like even more of an event via asking IMAX to do a lightning-quick conversion for this weekend’s wide release. The film, based on the beloved bear star of the children’s books, scored well with critics (98% approval on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (87%) alike. Still, the studio was already fully committed to the wide release of “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies,” and the overall Christmas box office was crowded with competing films; securing additional theatrical space for the wide-release of “American Sniper” would be difficult.

Ticket sales in that handful of theaters exceeded expectations, helping Warner to rally multiplex chains around the picture. “American Sniper” suddenly went from smaller auditoriums to the biggest bookings available. Okay, if you want to count the mostly “real world” Indiana Jones pictures (they tend to go religious/fantasy right at the very end), then you add in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with its $100m Fri-Sun debut. But everything changed when Chris died and Steven Spielberg came in and said, “We need to make this movie now.” That’s when I fell in love with the guy.

As I discussed last January when Lone Survivor debuted with $37.8 million, films that unequivocally play to and/or are about people living in so-called flyover country yet are actually released wide enough to be seen by said moviegoers are akin to event movies. My main thing, after each take, the only thing I would ask anybody, “Hey man, am I too big?” When I watched the first cut of the film, I was so monstrous, I thought any more pounds, it would have been farcical. This was indeed the kind of performance that resembled The Passion of the Christ, in that it brought out not just the politically-inclined and those connected to the military, but also the kind of audiences that don’t necessarily flock to the movies yet came out (and will come out) for this one. Mr. “We shouldn’t have been over there in the first place!” liberal film critic may have issues with the film’s politics, tin-eared dialogue, and its massaging a true-life biopic into generic action movie cliches (it’s less jingoistic than Lone Survivor, although frankly less interesting than the intriguingly procedural Act of Valor), but it arguably wasn’t made for me.

It also means more multiplex films that espouse a political or social viewpoint that I might not necessarily agree with and/or play to demographics that aren’t necessarily in my wheelhouse. It’s not that they can open The Dark Knight Rises to $160 million, it’s that they can open Magic Mike to $39m, The Great Gatsby to $50m, Gravity to $55m, and now American Sniper to a $90m four-day debut weekend.

Once that all happened, and then I got to the size, and I felt comfortable in his voice, or my voice as him, and I got comfortable with the three sniper rifles that he used, then it was like, “OK, let’s tell the story”. I hope they don’t get too bogged down in DC Comics movies, because their ability to distribute and market movies like this to numbers anywhere resembling this, not their ability to make another Batman movie, is what makes them valuable to the industry.